CHAPTER VII — GROUND PROFILE

Reading downward.

Chapter VI reads upward, into weather. This one reads the other direction. What the ground beneath the beds is made of, how warmth and water move through it hour by hour, and what the Canadian soil survey has long said about this particular stretch of Oro-Medonte. Three ways of describing the same body the microphones are pressed against.

BASS LAKE, ORO-MEDONTE, ONTARIO — 44°36′45″ N · 79°30′39″ W

TODAY, BY DEPTH

Listening down through the layers…

The profile, horizon by horizon

MODELLED COMPOSITION — SOILGRIDS 2.0, ISRIC

Taking the core…

The survey record

CANADIAN SOIL INFORMATION SERVICE — CANSIS

Long before any of this listening, surveyors walked Simcoe County with augers and named what they found. CanSIS holds that inheritance: the national archive of soil surveys, landscape polygons and horizon descriptions maintained by Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada. Because of that work, the ground under the beds already carries an official soil series name, recorded decades ago by surveyors who identified each layer by hand — by its texture, moisture and structure between their fingers.

SOURCE — CANADIAN SOIL INFORMATION SERVICE, AGRICULTURE AND AGRI-FOOD CANADA.

Read this ground alongside

ELSEWHERE IN THE PORTFOLIO

  • CHAPTER VI

    Where air meets soil

    The daily ledger above this profile — temperature, rain, smoke and haze logged since March.

  • CHAPTER II

    SoilWaves Live

    The live listening station at Bass Lake, broadcasting from the same beds these readings describe.

  • CHAPTER III

    Listening Room

    Recordings drawn from these horizons — the ground as it sounds, depth by depth.

  • CHAPTER IV

    Research Journal

    Soil recipes, petrichor and the hand-kept notes behind the modelled numbers.

  • CHAPTER I

    About SoilScapes

    How the beds came to Bass Lake, and the synthesis paper that frames the whole practice.

  • CHAPTER VIII

    Works that listened with me

    Soil science, sound studies and environmental history — the company this chapter keeps.